Documentary screening in London exposes sex trafficking along Highway 401 corridor

A documentary film shedding light on the experiences of survivors of sex trafficking across the London region and beyond is screening at the Forest City Film Festival on Saturday at noon. Dark Highway exposes the sex industry along the 401 corridor through first-hand experiences from survivors.

"It's still such an invisible crime," said director and producer Anna Jane (AJ) Edmonds. "It's here and it's around us —and we just have to talk about it and be a part of making a change."

Human trafficking for sexual exploitation is at a crisis level in Canada and one of the fastest-growing crimes in the country, with victims getting younger.

The 401 corridor is a known hotspot for sex traffickers, according to the Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking. London's proximity to the Highway 401 corridor is a factor in higher rates of sex trafficking in the region, also because of its proximity between Windsor and Toronto.

The film is screening at the Forest City Film Festival on Saturday, Oct. 26 at 12 noon at the Wolf Performance Hall. 

Edmonds, a Western University grad, set out to make the film when she found out how close the crime was to her own life and the people she loves.

"I felt an intense responsibility that now that I knew, I had to do something about it," said Edmonds, who splits her time between Kingston, Ont., and California.

For Kelly Tallon Franklin, the documentary is personal. 

"It's time for us to get ahead of this," said Franklin, who is a survivor of sex trafficking who knows runs an organization advocating for and supporting other survivors. 

She was trafficked both in Canada and abroad in the '80s, she said, facing a lack of resources and support back then, and now runs support programs for survivors from equine theory to art and talk therapy.

From the London area herself, she's seen the crime increase in the region, she said. 

"The average age of those that are victimized in the crime is lowering and that is problematic — and something that's covered well in this documentary," said Franklin. Most of the women she works with are between 12 and 17 years old. 

"There's the inhumane and degrading treatment that just violates the rights of these kids in a way that we can't even understand, and we can not sanitize ourselves from the reality of this," Franklin said. 

The film also covers the complexity and trends of the issues they are dealing with in real-time, along with who is being targeted and where legislation is failing, she said.